Some people have difficulty aiming a manual satellite dish, even with a meter. Others can do it but would prefer not to have to. Unfortunately, not everyone can afford the £1200 or more that a fully automatic dish would normally cost to buy, not to mention the £200 or so extra it would cost to have it professionally installed. However, if you have a bit of money left out of your birthday present from a doting relative, there are now a couple of alternatives. They are the VuQube and the PAPSA.

Away from caravanning, they could have another market. For people living in a conservation area and prohibited from having a dish permanently mounted on their property, these items will avoid any such restrictions. As long as you have a garden or a south facing balcony, you can use either device without contravening planning laws.

VuQube antenna

The VuQube is one of the strangest 'dishes' you'll ever come across. Like the other device on this page, the PAPSA, it's a portable satellite antenna which can be placed on the ground outside your caravan or motorhome. It comes with a 10 metre cable and a remote control. Unlike the PAPSA, it also boasts a twin LNB so that it can be used with a Sky+ or Freesat+ recorder.

Part of the design is a carrying handle because otherwise it's a bit bulky to carry around. Unfortunately the handle is open at the top so you can't use it to secure the unit to say the caravan to prevent theft. The internal mechanism is self-levelling so it doesn't matter if the ground is a bit uneven. The VuQube isn't strictly an automatic antenna - unlike the PAPSA you can't just 'wind it up and let it go'. However, as I understand it, the remote control has a readout that tells you the elevation and compass bearing the unit is currently pointing at, and you simply use the remote to turn the internal antenna the right way to bring it on to Astra 28. 

It's marketed in the UK by Maxview and sold in many outlets where Maxview has a presence, such as caravan accessory shops, or direct from Maxview. Check around because they vary widely in price. (Google, as always, is a good place to start). More details, together with a demonstration video, are at http://www.maxview.co.uk/products/info_MXL005.html.

PAPSA dish

There's an alternative to the VuQube. It's the Camos PAPSA ("Portable Automatic Positioning Satellite Antenna"), and reminds me a little of an old Doctor Who companion, K-9. (I'm quite sure that if we had one in our household, Mandy would be giving it a name.) It comes in several levels of sophistication but in its most basic "Single" form it costs just £700 (May 2011). It has 4 suction pad feet and can be placed on any flat surface, or even on the ground.

The Single model has just the one satellite system, Astra 2/Eurobird 1, programmed into its memory but as this is the one that carries all the UK channels, most people won't need anything more sophisticated. It comes with a remote control and 5 metres of cabling (12v power and satellite cable). The dish is a 46cms Cassegrain design and the total weight of the unit is 7kgs. Cassegrain dishes are more efficient than conventional dishes, so the unit should pull in signals from further afield than one might expect for the size of dish.

To set it up, you simply aim it roughly to the south east (anywhere between east and south is apparently good enough) and switch it on. When it's time to move on, another press of a button retracts the dish into its parked mode and the unit can then be stored away. Its dimensions are 521mm width and depth, and 430mm high in its parked position.

The unit can be used with any satellite receiver be it a Sky digibox, freesat receiver or free-to-air receiver. The only obvious drawback is that the dish only has a single LNB so you can't connect a twin-tuner recorder (Sky+, freesat+) to the unit. (Not quite true, it is possible to connect either a Sky+ or a freesat+ recorder to a single cable, but you'll only have access to 1 channel at a time.)

This is a link to a YouTube demonstration, created by Roadpro of Daventry:- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9_h6EP4ZvE. As regular visitors to this website know, I don't normally advertise individual companies of course so this is the only clue you're going to get as to where to buy it! As with the VuQube, it's not unique to just one supplier so do make use of Google and shop around.